They plunged into Janácek's spiky/folksy Sonata, with its weird little outbursts and mysterious rumblings, its manic dance energy and tender melody, then followed with Brahms's D-minor Violin Sonata, his last. I prefer their lean, more linear Brahms to its more familiar plush, so the melodies seemed more lilting than intense and I could follow the lines that make up the harmony before the final rhapsodic Presto agitato. Tetzlaff began with a delicate sweetness before turning his violin into a viola, or cello. Andsnes began with dark undercurrents before the full blossom of their intertwining. They put the Mozart sonata (F major, K.377, with its haunting central D-minor theme-and-variation movement) after intermission (not in its more usual place as an opening warm-up), giving it more weight, and ended with a performance of Schubert's brilliant B-minor Rondo brillant that provided this virtuoso showpiece with more musical substance than I'd credited it with. Two lively, appealing Sibelius Danses champêtres were the unfamiliar encores, and they left me very happy.
PS: I wrote last week that the Handel and Haydn Society's Haydn Orfeo (Haydn's final opera) had probably never been heard in Boston before. In fact, its American premiere was presented at MIT, in 1965, with tenor Richard Conrad in the title role. There were terrific reviews in all the local papers.
Related:
Beloved of God, Old and new, Phenomenal!, More 
- Beloved of God
One of my most profound musical experiences took place when I was still a graduate student.
- Old and new
There was hardly a concert I was more eager to hear than the Celebrity Series of Boston’s celebration of pianist Leon Fleisher’s 80th birthday.
- Phenomenal!
Living for a century is still a milestone; for a great and still-productive artist to do so is virtually unheard of.
- Magic bullets
Last week’s Boston Symphony Orchestra program looked odd on paper, but the concert was a knockout.
- Lift every voice!
Opera is the big word for 2009.
- The roar of the crowd
I wasn’t there, but the opening-night dissatisfaction with the Met’s new Tosca was widely reported.
- Almost
The Boston Lyric Opera comes maddeningly close to having a good Carmen . (The production continues at the Shubert Theatre through November 17.) Keith Lockhart leads a superb orchestra and chorus and a cast of plausible singers/actors in a compelling if not spine-tingling performance.
- Trail of tunes
The best summer music festivals take something from the season: the smell of the surf, the sight of the mountains, fireworks, lawn seating — or, at least, fried dough.
- Leon Kirchner, 1919–2009
Craggy, tender, passionate, witty, rough-edged, lyrical, uncompromising, Leon Kirchner's music, so like the man himself, made an indelible impression. Even in his recent appearance at a 90th-birthday tribute concert at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the old fire and wit, the frankness and the refusal to sentimentalize, were there.
- Open spaces
In my review of the memorable Brahms performances Sir Simon Rattle led with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for the Celebrity Series of Boston last month, I should have mentioned that one decision responsible for the beauty and spaciousness of the orchestral sound was the placement of the first and second violin sections on opposite sides of the stage.
- Baroque and beyond
Ten-best lists usually come at the end of the season, but this year the Phoenix has asked its critics to provide a calendar of 10 events that, at least on paper, might wind up on an end-of-season Top 10. Boston, in case you didn't know it, is a great city for classical music, so it's not easy to keep the list short. But here goes.
- Less
Topics:
Classical
, Entertainment, Music, James Morris, More
, Entertainment, Music, James Morris, Richard Conrad, Barbara Frittoli, Barbara Frittoli, Simon Boccanegra, Simon Boccanegra, tanglewood, REQUIEM, Less
